


supervised

by remi_wolf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Boss/Employee Relationship, Collars, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Jon is a very good fear meal for the Beholding, Misuse of Beholding Avatar Powers (The Magnus Archives), Non-con BDSM, Not actually sexual assault but definitely can feel like it, Power Imbalance, Rape/Non-con Elements, Stalking, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: Less than two weeks into his tenure as Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Jon has been called into Elias' office in order to address some concerns Elias has regarding Jonathan's behavior, namely his burgeoning habit of spending the night in the Archives, as well as his tendency to miss meals. Unfortunately, Elias feels he needs to take Jonathan's health into his own hands, keeping a very close eye on him to ensure that he remains as healthy as the Archivist can be.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions, Remi's Whumptober Collection for 2020, Whumptober 2020





	supervised

**Author's Note:**

> Look. It's a dark fic. It's Whumptober, Day 2: In the Hands of the Enemy. There's no sexual touching, and no sexual overtones to it, despite the parallels the collar has to a submissive's collar in BDSM. There's a power imbalance, and coercion, and Elias using a possibly sci-fi collar to monitor Jon's movements, eating, and sleep habits. This isn't a fun time for Jon, and yeah. Definitely non-con elements, but nothing explicitly sexual.  
> I do like what I've started with here, so...I might continue it later? Not sure about that, but we'll see. Right now, it's just this one-off.

“You’re truly concerning me, Jonathan.”

Jonathan grimaced slightly as he looked at his hands in his lap, playing his fingers and nails, trying not to feel like a child getting admonished by their mother, but he couldn’t help but feel the flush of shame crawling up his neck as he sat in front of Elias’ desk. “I’m fine, sir. I promise, it’s just...I’m fine.” Elias didn’t need to hear any of his silly excuses, and he pushed his chair back so he could leave. “I’ll try not to cause you concern again.”

“Sit back down.”

Jonathan sat before he could think twice about it, and he looked up at Elias, hands tight and pressed against his stomach as though he could keep the anxiety from spilling out of him. It wouldn’t work, or at least, it wouldn’t keep him from getting even more anxious over everything. “I’m sorry, sir. It was one night.”

“No, I really don’t think it was.” Elias hummed softly, turning to his computer before glancing briefly at Jonathan, tutting softly. “According to my records, you’ve stayed all night at the institute at least three nights since you started here two weeks ago, with two of those incidents happening this week. As it is, it’s almost eight in the evening, and everyone else has left at least an hour ago, if not two.” 

“I’ll just be leaving, then.”

Elias shook his head, tutting again as he leaned across the table, looking at Jonathan. “I have to say, I’m concerned you’re going to make this a pattern, Jon. And I know you’ve been skipping meals. If you’re going to run yourself into the ground, I’m going to have to reconsider this promotion.”

Jon’s eyes widened as he looked at Elias, quickly shaking his head. “No, no, sir. I promise I can handle this. I didn’t want to...I’m simply trying to get the archives into a reasonable place as quickly as possible.” He shifted in his chair, hoping that Elias wouldn’t strip him of the title of Archivist in only two weeks. Not even two weeks, really. He had only really properly started in the Archives itself a week and a half ago.

“But I cannot trust that you’ll go home like you should, Jon. I’m sorry, but I think more drastic steps than a simple warning need to be taken.” Elias turned from Jon, starting to go through a drawer, not even caring about the way that Jon grew perfectly still, terrified of whatever reprimand this would be. 

He needed this job. He didn’t know where else he would go, and he was still trying to find answers for Mr. Spider, even if he didn’t want to admit it. And, really, he did like the people he worked with. Tim, and Sasha, and he supposed Martin was nice, if a bit flustered and scattered. But Jon needed this job, and he couldn’t let Elias take it from him. He should have hidden his overnight stays better. He should have done _something_ to keep Elias from finding out, even if he had thought he had done everything right to keep him from noticing. 

“Now, Jonathan, I know this seems drastic, but I think it might be best for everyone involved if we take this step, rather than allowing you to continue floundering on your own.”

Jon frowned, looking at Elias, before his eyes landed on the pale white box. He didn’t recognize the logo on it whatsoever, and it certainly didn’t remind him of what a box would look like if it had forms for a reprimand or something like that. Elias continued speaking, though, as though he didn’t even realize that Jon wasn’t paying attention to the speech in favor of staring at the box with a sick sense of dread pooling in his stomach, even as Elias began to open the box. 

“Am I understood, Jon?”

Jon jumped as Elias addressed him, and he looked at him quickly, eyes wide. “I...sorry? I must have—”

“Worse than I thought, then. Clearly this is necessary. For your own good, you see? I simply want my Archivist in the best possible health, and this should help.”

Elias opened the box and pulled a small tray out of it, setting that on the desk and removing the outer box. Jon didn’t pay attention to that, instead absolutely confused by the ring on the tray, carefully inscribed with shapes to give it almost a decorative look to it. How this would help him go home on time, or not miss meals, or whatever it was Elias wanted from him? It was...

Well, it was a _collar_ , of all things.

“What is this?”

“If you had listened to me—” Jon could hear the annoyed edge to Elias’s voice, “—this is a cutting-edge health-monitoring device. A colleague of mine developed it, and offered it to me for testing.”

“A...a colleague?” Jon frowned as he looked at Elias. “We’re a research institution. An archive and folklore research institution.”

Elias rolled his eyes for a moment before pulling the collar from the tray and unlocking it. “A friend, then. I have a small stake in a pharmaceutical company. Not all of us come from nothing, after all.” He smirked faintly at Jon before standing up and walking around the desk. 

Jon jumped, jerking away from Elias and practically falling off his chair in the effort to get away from him. “You’re not putting that on me.”

“Jonathan. For one, your contract allows me to reprimand you however I see fit. For two, I will fire you if you do not do this. I clearly cannot trust you to go home at a reasonable time, and the fact that you remain in the archives overnight is a safety hazard. What would happen if there was a break-in? Your very presence in the Institute would be a hazard and cast suspicion on you. This will ensure that I know you are going home and taking care of yourself.” Elias sighed, hands dropping before he forced a smile onto his face, as tired and as fake as it looked, even to Jon. “I don’t want to hurt you. And I don’t want to fire you. However...this is the only way I see us moving forward.”

Jon frowned as he looked at the silver ring, wondering how it would work, what it would even do, but he needed this job. He needed this job, and if it meant that Elias had... _that_ on him...maybe he could ignore it. Maybe he’d be able to figure out how to hide things from it. 

“Fine.”

Elias grinned, closing the distance between them and locking the collar around Jon’s neck with a silver key. His hands were warm, and if it had been under any other circumstances, Jon would almost feel as though they were caring touches, but he couldn’t think about anything other than the press of cool metal against his skin with only barely enough ease for him to swallow and breathe around it. The moment it settled against his throat, Elias’ hands back at his sides, Jon jumped as he felt a prick against his neck, just underneath the collar. He immediately reached up, trying to figure out what had pricked him, or bit him, but there was just the collar. 

“Elias?”

“Thank you, Jonathan. Please go home now.”

Jonathan stared at Elias, watched as he simply sat down at the desk, and he finally turned and left. He felt numb, as though he was floating a few feet behind his body, and he wished it was winter so that he could pull his coat past the ring of metal that contrasted so sharply with the skin on his throat. 

The entire trip back to his tiny flat he could feel eyes on his back. Eyes watching him and looking at the metal around his neck, judging him and what he had done. He wanted to scream at them, tell them that he did it to save his job, but he sank deeper and deeper into himself, as though making himself as unobtrusive as possible would keep their eyes off him. He could swear that he even saw people at their windows, watching as he walked into his building, or practically running inside so that he could get to where it was safe.

Just as he slammed his door shut and locked it, practically sliding down to his knees on the cracked linoleum floor, Jon heard his phone buzz. What anyone could want with him, Jon didn’t know. It wasn’t as though he texted anyone, other than occasionally Tim, but Tim had almost entirely stopped talking to him once he received the promotion. After a few moments, his phone buzzed again, and he finally tugged it out of his pocket. 

> _Now that you’re home, please eat within the next thirty minutes so you can get to sleep in two to three hours. -Elias_

Jon’s hands shook as he saw the text, and he reached a hand up to the collar. He could almost hook a finger around it, but jostling it hurt, pulled at the entire thing, and the slight ache from when he had been pricked simply grew worse. There had to be a GPS tracker or _something_ in it, but that didn’t make Jon feel any better. None of this made him feel any better, not as he curled up on the dirty floor he still needed to sweep and mop this week. 

Forty minutes later, Jon’s phone buzzed in his hand.

> _Eat. -Elias_

Jon didn’t want to eat, but he pulled himself up to his feet. It was late, he knew that, and he’d be risking not getting enough sleep if he waited much longer anyways, so...he ate. He quietly made a simple sandwich—he needed to go grocery shopping, too—before looking back at his phone as he ate it. 

> _Eating._

Jon's phone buzzed not even a moment later, not even giving him enough time to look away from the screen, really.

> _I know. -Elias_

Jon frowned at the text before turning his phone off and curling up on the couch. The metal dug into his neck, keeping him from being properly comfortable, but after the day he had...sleep came far more easily than he ever would want to admit. 

A shock in his neck woke Jon up, startling him bad enough that he fell off the couch with a yelp. A hand instantly clapped to his neck, trying to figure out what happened, though the touch immediately reminded him about the collar around his neck. His stomach dropped immediately. So the previous night’s events hadn’t been an awful nightmare. It was reality. His reality.

His phone buzzed. Jon sighed, closing his eyes for a moment before looking at the text message, trying to ignore the way his stomach dropped again as he realized it was Elias, yet again. 

> _I have breakfast waiting for you. You will be late if you do not leave in the next fifteen minutes. I expect you presentable and at work on time every morning. -Elias_

Jon frowned at the phone before standing up, quickly getting changed and cleaned and dressed before leaving. Yes, the weather wasn’t at all suitable for the coat with the tall collar, and especially not for the scarf, but he didn’t want to risk anyone seeing the collar yet again. He didn’t want that shame to continue following him. 

It was easy to get to work, though. He was hot, though, and the coat and scarf immediately got pulled off after he got past Martin and Tim and Sasha, curled up in his office with a breakfast sandwich sitting on his desk with coffee, and the cool metal of the collar still pressed against his neck. 

Maybe he could get Georgie to help take it off of him. She had tools, what with her ghost investigations and the like. Maybe she—

But then he’d lose his job.

He didn’t hear the door open until Martin stood there, and while Jon scrambled to find his scarf to hide the collar again, he could clearly hear Martin’s confused voice. 

“What’s that around your neck, Jon?”


End file.
